God, the grammar Nazis are breading on Slashdot. Fuck off!
Pretzel breading or just a simple flour breading?
From the perspective of a former cycle courier with almost a decade of experience: If everybody followed the letter of the law, traffic in cities would come to a grinding halt in short order. You just go ahead and follow the rules. You'll find people cutting in front of you (and then slamming on their brakes) in short order, and myriad horns blaring at you as you wait for pedestrians to leave the crosswalk (or, depending on your jurisdiction, leave your half of the roadway if a two-way street).
If -everyone- was following the letter of the law, none of what you just described above would be happening. The problem is as soon as a few people choose not to, the entire system falls apart. This may have been your overarching point, but your first sentence seems to contradict that.
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"